Pin-ups, crystals, sci-fi, Magritte and Ballard: The surreal imagery of artist Martin Rayment
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
Artist's Statement: Martin Rayment combines vintage found imagery, detailed pen-and-ink work and collage techniques to produce prints that have a surreal, science-fiction feel
Martin Rayment, Sludgey Low© Martin Rayment, courtesy BacklitMy dad always had a strange collection of books. He had Rene Magritte and Hieronymus Bosch books lying around the house and I started reading them. The unique, otherworldly aspects that they created hooked me.
Until this discovery I’d thought of art as merely decoration. Then I was at the point where I was at school and I was either going to specialise in drama or art. My mother encouraged me to look through this Magritte book and think about what the images were trying to say and that was a crucial point. I later went to Nottingham Trent to study Fine Art.
Crystal Awe© Martin Rayment, courtesy BacklitJG Ballard – I love his style of writing. I was switched onto him by a tutor at university. I started making geometric shapes and began to let them flourish beside collaged images after reading Ballard’s descriptions in The Crystal World.
In the book, the crystals expanded over the whole earth and I re-enacted this in my work. I like how the story ends, in a blissful annihilation, where everything reverts back to a carbon state.
The Crystal World© Martin Rayment, courtesy BacklitI use the pin-ups because they have really nice, flowing theatrical shapes. I will often dissect those images and create new works from them.
I go through my ‘bank’ – my books – find a part of an image I like, dissect it and dump it onto a big white space and start working around it there and then.
Collapse© Martin Rayment, courtesy BacklitGoing to Backlit, in Nottingham, has been really good for me in that respect. When I first came here I was sharing a space with an artist who was at the same stage I am now. He was commercialising his work, putting it on t-shirts and selling his original drawings for hundreds of pounds.
He was commercialising his work but also keeping his integrity. I learned a lot from that and I’m using that same formula really.”
This article first appeared in the Backlit May 2016 newsletter.
- Visit backlit.org.uk and martinrayment.com.
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Three places to see surreal art in
Oriel Mostyn Art Gallery, Llandudno
Born in 1980 and based in Wales. Iwan Lewis works primarily in painting and installation. Drawing from a broad spectrum of cultural influence Lewis’s landscape is often surreal yet diaristic, indulging in mis-readings and failed languages. His current exhibition, Uprisings, is at the gallery until May 22 2016.
Tate Modern, London
The influence of surrealism stretched far beyond the confines of the movement, as individual artists made their own explorations of the irrational and the unconscious. Find out more in the permanent exhibition, Beyond Surrealism.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Surreal Encounters - Collecting the Marvellous brings together some of the finest surrealist works of art from four legendary private collections, those of Edward James, Roland Penrose, Gabrielle Keiller and Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch. Until September 11 2016.
